Are baby boomers changing their instant gratification habits?
Recently, when I took a trip to the mall while I was on vacation in Miami, I surprised to see the mall culture alive and well.
People thronged about two hundred stores offering every kind of goodie imaginable. I didn’t see a single boarded up business. I wondered whether nothing has changed in these difficult economic times. Whether consumers, especially baby boomers famous for their conspicuous consumption, are continuing the shopping life style.
Later I heard a program from National Public Radio’s WBUR on “Our Delayed Gratification Era.”
On Point host Tom Ashbrook interviewed John Lehrer, science writer and contributing editor at Wired, who recently wrote an article for the New Yorker called “Don’t! The Secret of Self Control.”
Leher, author of “How We Decide,” described a 1968 study in which 4 year olds were given one marshmallow or an Oreo cookie and told if they could wait, they’d get a second one. The children rang a bell when they were ready to eat the marshmallow or cookie.
“Every kid decides to wait,” Leher said on the program. Some ring the bell right away, some in 2 minutes, and others in 2.5 minutes. Some wait 15 minutes.
High delayers are better at distracting themselves. They turn their backs on the treat or sing songs from Sesame Street.
During their senior year, the high delayers were studied again. It was found that they got along better with friends, were less likely to do drugs, achieved higher SAT scores, and were more even tempered.
“It’s a dramatic difference,” Leher said. “At the age of 4, will power is more of a predictor of success than IQ.”
Ashbrook wanted to know if low delayers could be taught cognitive strategies to build self control. “It could have big consequences nationwide.”
Walter Mischel, who conducted the tests and is now a professor at Columbia University, is doing research now to see if kids between 4 and 8 can be taught delayed gratification. Low delayers have lost skills to delay gratification and need interventions to get the skills back, he said on the program.
Mischel and his colleagues are hoping to identify the particular brain regions that allow some people to delay gratification and control their temper, reports the New Yorker article. They’re also conducting a variety of genetic tests, as they look for the hereditary characteristics that influence the ability to wait for a second marshmallow.
In American culture, people are used to buying on credit so they can enjoy things immediately. This behavior is sustained by how the brain works, Mischel said. It’s called temporal discounting. People focus on instant gratification not what will happen years from now.
It’s encouraging to think if we could teach a child to delay gratification, it could make a difference in spending patterns as adults, he said. However, at the moment, how teachable this is isn’t known.
Another guest on the program, economic historian Richard Sylla, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said people aren’t currently “snagging” the stuff they normally would. They’re staying out of stores.
Americans were used to rising standard of living until 1990, and generally had been prosperous, said Sylla. In 1990, workers in India, China, and other countries all over the world began competing with U.S. workers.
When workers here saw their standard of living was stagnate, they kept their spending up by using home equity loans and credit cards and investing in the stock market and 401Ks. They thought they didn’t need to save.
People with nothing to do would go to store and buy something interesting to distract themselves.
Sylla said he thinks Americans can change. In 1980, President Carter urged Americans to tear up their credit cards during an inflationary period. During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt reassured Americans the banks were safe for deposits, and they began putting their money in banks again.
Mischel also believes people can change their spending habits. His research on psychology and the human mind shows people have plasticity and can change economic and social behavior. People are creatures of evolution and can and do change, he said.
It’s probably time for Americans to cut back, Sylla said. If they save, they’ll learn to get two marshmallows down the road. “A lot of security comes from savings.”
“The word is out,” he said. “People will benefit by saving more.” For example, if they lose their jobs, they’ll need savings for living expenses.
Americans will return to the way they’ve lived through history, Sylla said. The high consumptive lifestyle of recent decades will be abandoned. “I suspect we’ll go back to more delayed gratification."
